Firefox only: Mozilla Labs unveils the first prototype of a natural language web service connector called Ubiquity, a Firefox extension that adds a command panel to any web page. Ubiquity will look familiar to Quicksilver, Launchy, or Enso users: you invoke Ubiquity with a key combination and the text field drops down command suggestions as you type. Ubiquity's built-in command set consists of "user-centric mashups" that let you perform tasks using various web services in one place using natural language. For example, you can insert a Google map into a new Gmail message (invoke Ubiquity and type "map [business name]"); you can look up a topic on Wikipedia in-page without switching tabs; you can select a paragraph of text in a foreign language and translate it in-page, or map a list of addresses from Craigslist by just selecting them. See these examples and more in practice in the introductory video.

Like Quicksilver's three-paned subject-verb-object expressions, what makes Ubiquity exciting is that it lets you interact with the web in the natural way you want to do things ("email this to John") instead of making you re-order the steps to accommodate the browser ("copy this link to clipboard, open new tab, start new email, enter John's address, and paste link into body"). Ubiquity's smart, too—it has access to your email contacts, for example, and can refer to the current page as "this." Here's what emailing an image to a contact named "Chris" looks like in the Ubiquity pane.

That said, convincing non-power users to hit a key combination to interact with what's essentially a souped-up command line may be a hard sell. But, the command line is indeed making a comeback, and even as an early prototype Ubiquity is a very exciting step in that direction for application launcher lovers. Ubiquity is still an early prototype, but version 0.1 is available for download now from Mozilla Labs.